A valuable mine of information of particular interest to social scientists, medical professionals, and concerned citizens...
Award-winning Nature journalist Pearson chronicles a series of groundbreaking longitudinal, cradle-to-grave birth-cohort studies begun by British scientists in the aftermath of World War II.
At a time when there was still food rationing and a major housing shortage, there was particular concern about how mothers and infants were faring. During one week in March 1946, the first of these studies surveyed 13,687 mothers who filled out a questionnaire on their experience of pregnancy and the health of the newborns. Not surprisingly, class differences proved to be determining factors in premature birth: “babies in the lowest class were 70% more likely to be born dead that those in the most prosperous, and they were also far more likely to be born prematurely.” These results were influential in the 1948 launch of the National Health Service, which provided better free maternity care and provisions for high-risk births. This study was followed by four other studies, in 1958, 1970, 1991, and 2000, with another one possibly in the offing. Over the 70 years since the first one, scientists have kept track of the cohorts, recording data on health, longevity, and social mobility. The correlation with class still persists, but scientists are now planning to analyze data from the 1958 cohort to determine “what factors in middle and old age…can reverse the effects of disadvantage in early life.” Comparisons between the cohorts are also enlightening. For example, obesity loomed as a problem in the 2000 study, which showed that 23 percent of children were either overweight or obese by age 3. The same study also looked closely at the quality of parenting, including the birth experience and whether or not the infant was breast-fed. Thankfully, in the digital age, cohort studies are easier to process, making more fine-tuned analysis possible.
A valuable mine of information of particular interest to social scientists, medical professionals, and concerned citizens who seek to influence social policy.Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59376-645-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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